Number 11 (1983)

From the Director's Desk

Since its founding in 1976, the Institute has focused its energies in two areas, encouraging Verdi research by providing opportunities for scholars to read papers, and building a center for study, the AIVS Verdi Archive housed at New York University. This Newsletter, No. 11, is designed to share with our readers some of the results of the research and provide a parallel with the double issue, Nos. 9-10, which was devoted to the Archive.

The paper by Stephen Casale was the result of research conducted while completing his Master's project for the Department of Music at N.Y.U., a catalogue of almost three hundred letters written by Verdi and Giuseppina Strepponi Verdi to members of the Escudier family. Leon and Marie Escudier, later Leon alone, published Verdi's music in Paris. There is also an abstract of a paper by Greg Harwood, read at the national meeting of the American Musicological Society (Ann Arbor 1982), on Italian opera orchestras in the 19th century, which originated in degree work at N.Y.U. Eight of the abstracts represent papers read at the annual meetings sponsored by the Institute and the American Musicological Society in 1979, 1980, and 1981. The paper by Clifford D. Alper and the remaining abstracts were the result of a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar for College Teachers on "The Operas of Verdi," held at the Institute in the summer of 1980.

Verdians everywhere are rejoicing at the reemergence of the Istituto di Studi Verdiani of Parma as an active center of scholarly activity. Under the leadership of a dynamic new director, Dr. Pierluigi Petrobelli, a member of the Advisory Board of AIVS, the Parma organization has published Verdi Bolletino No. 9, the last of three issues devoted to Rigoletto, as well as the first volume in an important new series, Studi Verdiani. In addition, the Istituto mounted a major exhibit of Aida materials in Cairo and various centers in Europe, including Verona and Paris. We hope it will also come to the United States.

It is a pleasure to report that the two Verdi Institutes are continuing the cooperation begun with the Macbeth Congress in Danville with plans for the joint filming of Verdi materials in Italy during the summers of 1982 and 1983. Together with the publishers of the new critical edition, the Works of Giuseppe Verdi, the University of Chicago Press and G. Ricordi of Milan, the two Institutes are sponsoring a Verdi Convegno in Vienna, March 12 and 13, 1983. The event will mark the publication and first performance of the new edition of Rigoletto, the inaugural volume of the series. Riccardo Muti will conduct at the Staatsoper and will participate in the session of the Convegno devoted to the problems of editing Rigoletto. Other sessions will be devoted to the analysis of and the sources for Verdi's music, and the format is to be short papers as a point of departure for round table discussions by Verdi specialists from Europe and the United States. Unfortunately the distance of the event from New York precludes the AIVS making any arrangements for opera tickets, hotels, or travel.

A report of this event will be made at the annual meeting of the AIVS and Greater New York Chapter of the American Musicological Society scheduled for Saturday, March 19, 1983.